Slow and heavy wins the race, or "how I learned to stop complaining and love the heavy"

I've been out of town for about a week but now, resulting in the lack of new stuff up here, but I'm back with a vengeance and ready to tackle my summer project for the site: a series on awesome, new, heavy music.

This has come about because I can't help but notice that a lot of internet music "critics" (for lack of a better term) like to talk shit about heavy bands. The narrative which is most often invoked is something along the lines of "oh look, another slow, heavy band, just like Neurosis and Isis. There's too many bands like this now, therefore, this record sucks."

Now I'm old enough to remember when it was just Neurosis and Isis was thought of as a clone, but after they'd been around long enough they kind of became part of the pantheon (I am, however, NOT old enough to remember when people thought of Neurosis as biting Swans early stuff, but am aware that apparently they got hammered with that in their early days). That seems to be going on now with Cult of Luna who were, until recently, just considered a pitiful Isis clone, but now seem to have hit the official point where they've been around long enough that random internet tastemakers can freely talk about them as a band based on their own merit, not just on the merit of some other band. So now, when you see a review of a heavy band, it's "oh, another band that sounds like Cult of NeurIsis. Yawn." The fact that I've seen multiple people use the phrase "Cult of NeurIsis" on the internet is enough to make me want to punch my computer.

There you have it. This is the current narrative which you're supposed to invoke if you review a heavy band. And it's bullshit. One hundred and ten percent, crazy, lying bullshit.

Here's the thing: I like good music. I know that's fucking crazy. For real. I mean, just total insanity. However, because I'm one of these crazy weirdoes who likes good music I can say with confidence that I'm not really concerned if there's a million bands or two bands playing a particular style. What matters is if the current band I'm listening to does what they do well.

The notion that every band has to be doing something new and different is a load of garbage. Most of us who play music aren't trying to reinvent the wheel. We're trying to bring something positive to our own lives, and if someone else comes along for the ride, that's fucking great. The continual search for the new and different leads people to heap undue praise (in my opinion) on some truly awful music just because it's different, while ignoring some truly great music, just because it's derivative. Don't tell me you've never read a review of some great band that dismisses them for sounding like the obligatory "other band that came before," right after reading a review of some total shit that was praised to high heaven just for being the proverbial "new."

There used to be this 'zine, which I won't name, that I picked up a few issues of in the late '90s because the authors tastes were somewhat similar to mine. The reviews section of the 'zine, however, spilled gallons of ink complaining and complaining about how uncreative records are, lamenting how awful it is to be a record reviewer, gallantly wading through horrible CD after horrible CD*.

One issue of the 'zine, however, revealed what's so crass about this: in a column, one of the reviewers mentioned that he makes a decent amount of money each month selling back all the CDs he gets for review that he doesn't want, which he then puts towards getting CDs he does want. In other words, bands send him free CDs, he shits all over their hard work, and then gets money for it.

Boo fucking hoo. Hold on while I get out my violin.

Now I'm not saying there aren't truly shitty, generic records out there. I'm just saying that just because something doesn't break the mold doesn't mean you need to come up with six different ways to say the band members should be killed.

I'm also aware that this has obviously changed a bit in the internet age, where used CDs don't command the same price they once did, but the point still stands: if you don't like getting free music in exchange for giving your opinion about it, then stop doing it. It's as simple as that.

Beyond that, the whole "original/unoriginal" thing is a big sham. What is and is not derivative is a social construction, if we may be honest. A few years ago people all over the internet shit their pants for Wolfmother, a band who just did what every band did in the 70s. A few years before that, glossy magazine music critics informed us that The Strokes were the greatest thing to ever happen to western civilization, despite the fact that they pretty much sounded like a bunch of bands from the early 80s. Nothing against Wolfmother or The Strokes, but neither of them have reinvented the wheel, despite what random people all over the internet tried to convince me.

I would personally argue that very little is truly original and what is original is often not worth listening to. I like music to fit into a community. I like it to be in a dialogue with other music, and with other genres, and with the listener. "Here are our influences. What are you getting out of this?" THAT'S interesting. The community of music players and appreciators having a dialogue with each other.

So having said that, it gets a little tedious to see this genre of music I love, slow, crushing, heavy stuff, written off so consistently, just as bands are really beginning to push it in some new and interesting directions.

Really, nothing is derivative or not derivative unless in can be plugged into some kind of narrative. The narrative may be "bands from Seattle drawing on classic rock and punk who wear flannel are the new thing" or "bands from New York who reinterpret 80s new wave and punk are going to save rock and roll" or "bands who play riff based classic rock type stuff, but heavier, have become generic and are clogging up the music scene with sound-alikes," but they all color the way in which we interpret the music we listen to. I could point you to any number of music review websites where you can see these narratives at work, coloring how records are discussed, rated, and recommended, but I tend to be a pretty diplomatic guy, so I won't.

Instead, I'm going to put my money where my mouth is: this summer I'd like to change the narrative on slow, heavy music from "there's too many bands that sound like this" to "holy shit, there's a lot of diversity in this genre, and a lot of awesome bands to listen to." I'm going to try and review as many slow and heavy bands as I can this summer, and hopefully I'll be able to convince people to listen with a fresh set of ears to some sweet, crushing riffs.

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*I should also point out that the guys who did this 'zine put their own band on a CD comp that came with one of the issues and it was, no surprise, shit. Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit. If it were food, I wouldn't feed it to a dying dog. If it were a person I wouldn't have dirtied my foot kicking it in the groin. Literally, one of the 3 worst songs I've ever heard. Crap pop-punk pretending it wasn't pop punk by yelling in some pirate voices every once and a while, with a pretentious explanation of the lyrics for lyrics so obvious and ham-fisted they couldn't possibly warrant an explanation. Obviously the ability to come up with vaguely clever ways to trash bands doesn't correlate perfectly with the ability to actually write a song that doesn't sound like my stereo ate bad clams.